Katie Couric: Slipping Already?

A week ago Katie Couric was a news superstar. She blew away the competition in her debut last Tuesday. And if you missed a chance to see her, you have only yourself to blame. CBS turned itself into the Couric Broadcasting System.

CBS

Last Tuesday Katie Couric was the darling of television news. But now?

But now the early returns have people wondering if the network didn’t overplay its hand. Couric debuted as new anchor of the nightly news with a bang, handily out-polling NBC and ABC. But her numbers have fallen steadily since and the Drudge Report is saying that by Friday she’d dropped to third place.

Some slippage is to be expected, of course. Couric’s lid-lifter was covered by everyone but Feed and Grain News. You almost had to tune in to see if she was able to sit at a desk and read a teleprompter at the same time. (She can, by the way. Apparently she’s been practicing at some morning show on another network.)

But this drop, baring some statistical oddity, is steep. And it raises the question of whether CBS overdid the “All Katie, All the Time” overkill and also is makes you wonder about the new, fluffier CBS evening news.

You certainly didn’t have any problem getting a chance to see Couric’s work. She made her debut as anchor of the nightly news on Tuesday, followed that up with a prime time special on Wednesday, and basically took over “60 Minutes” on Sunday night. And next Sunday she’ll join Boomer Esiason and James Brown on NFL Today to discuss Terrell Owens and his inner child.

Just kidding on that last one — I think.

Couric drew a stunning 13.6 million viewers her first night, enough that her drop to 10.1 million the second night wasn’t much reported. That’s still a healthy lead over ABC and NBC, which were about seven million.

But just in case anyone thought that all they had to do was roll out Katie and clean up on the ratings, her prime time special on Wednesday night “Five Years Later: How Safe Are We?” didn’t exactly dominate the night. Despite an exclusive interview with President Bush, it drew a little over five million pairs of eyeballs. Sure, that’s a lot of people, but when you consider that the it was thumped convincingly — 9.12 million viewers — by a repeat of “Law and Order,” it adds a bit of perspective.

As has been so often the case at CBS, steady ol’ Bob Schieffer has a good take on matters. Schieffer who came to the evening news as a placeholder and ended up staying a year and a half, raising ratings as he did, has just vacated the chair Couric is taking.

The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz reports that at a CBS party for him over the weekend, Schieffer talked about how fortunate he was to come in without expectation. For Couric, Schieffer said, “. . . expectations are so great that she’s got to jump over the moon or somebody’s going to write that they are disappointed. That’s unfair.”

Unfair, but likely. In fact, Couric’s first week has already got the snipers sniping. It isn’t just the Katie-factor. There are also complaints about the new softer approach to the news hour.

As Kurtz says, CBS has decided that viewers already know the major stories by the time Katie comes onto their screen. Therefore, they intend to work around the edges of the news. The optimistic view is that they will offer “in depth” coverage, but the cynics say it is more likely to be happy chat and gimmicks, like the “Free Speech” segment, where blowhards get time to rant about personal crusades. (Here’s betting that foolishness doesn’t last long.)

In other words, the thinking goes, it was no coincidence that the big scoop Couric used to kick off her tenure was the Vanity Fair cover showing the first picture of Suri, the baby of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. (And seriously, didn’t it look like that kid was wearing a toupee?)

That, the critics are saying, is indicative of the kind of “news” Couric is going to be delivering. If so, it is going to be interesting. Kurtz says one of the stories that fell by the wayside at CBS was the interest by Democratic leaders in staging a vote of “no confidence” for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. That’s sounds like a pretty big story to ignore.

Right now the numbers from the first week seem to indicate a big bang of a start, followed by a slow slide. How long will it be before they get Katie out of the studio and involved in one of those zany stunts she used to do on the “Today Show?”